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NASUWT announces Nov 30th ballot dates

The NASUWT today announced the timetable for balloting its 220,000 members for industrial action on November 30th.

The ballot will run from November 4th to 17th, as the union joins fourteen others planning to take part in a mass strike over public sector pensions.

As the Secretary of State for Education prepares to address the Conservative Party Conference on the success of the coalition’s education policies, NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates said:

“Despite all our best efforts to engage constructively with this coalition, in 16 months in office they have conducted a campaign of denigration of the teaching profession, encouraged schools to ignore contractual entitlements, attacked pension provision, undermined professional status and put in place plans to put the whole of the teaching workforce on a permanent competency procedure.

“Savage cuts to local authority and school budgets and the proposals for the EBacc (English Baccalaureate) have caused job insecurity for all teachers and job loss of many specialist teachers and support staff.

“The result is that now half of teachers are seriously considering quitting the profession and 84% of teachers feel professionally disempowered and unable to do the best for the children and young people they teach.

“97% of teachers do not believe that the coalition government’s education policies will improve standards of education.

“All of this will impact adversely on standards of education.

“This is a damning indictment of this coalition.

“We have shared with the Secretary of State our concerns about the policy direction of travel, but quite frankly our views have been swept aside by a tide of ideological fervour, driven more by the desire to create a free market and lining the pockets of business than ensuring that all children have the highest standards of education.

“The NASUWT and its members will now therefore be ‘Standing up for Standards’ by conducting a ballot for action.

“A successful outcome in the ballot will enable teachers’ to reclaim their contractual entitlements and free them from burdensome tasks that are distracting them from focusing on teaching and learning.

“They will also be able to challenge the unjustifiable tax on their pensions.

“All of this is putting off thousands of talented graduates from seeking a career in teaching.”

The NASUWT is today publishing a survey of over 13,000 teachers that identifies the drivers for the excessive workload they are reporting, which are preventing them from focusing on teaching and learning.

Chris Keates said: “The survey makes deeply depressing reading. It’s clear that teachers are now being asked to pay the price for the cuts in support staff and services, for poor management practices and the culture created by the Coalition that the conditions of the workforce are immaterial – what the employer says goes.

“The findings are stark. The profession is being paralysed by the red tape driven by the inspection regime.

“Teachers are standing at photocopiers rather than focusing on teaching.

“Teachers are also shouldering the burden of cuts in vital support staff, which are putting at risk the support for some of the most vulnerable children.”